Mark Steyn

New Hampshire ‘It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’ Idealism is the new realism. Or as one of my disaffected conservative neighbours summed up the Bush speech: ‘Great. We’re gonna invade every country and shove freedom down their throats, whether they want it or not.’ Or in the words of a newly popular bumper sticker on the back of Vermont granolamobiles: ‘FOUR MORE WARS!

Whatever their faults, says Mark Steyn, America’s Christian fundamentalists are a lot smarter than Eutopian secularists New Hampshire As in previous years, Planned Parenthood has been selling greetings cards for abortion proponents filled with seasonal cheer to send to each other: ‘Choice On Earth’, they proclaim. I can just about understand being a proponent of abortion; I find it harder to fathom someone whose obsession with the subject extends to sending out holiday cards on the theme. Especially as, insofar as the Christmas story is relevant to this question, it’s a season to reflect on the potential of every new life.

‘He is sedated,’ said Bill Clinton’s heart surgeon on Tuesday. ‘But he is arousable.’ I’ve never doubted it. That seems as appropriate a thought as any with which to consider the state of the new war three years on. Like former President Clinton, much of the West is sedated. But is it arousable? On the eve of this week’s anniversary, hundreds of children were murdered in their schoolhouse by terrorists. Terrible. But even more terrible was the reaction of what passes for the civilised world, the reluctance to confront the truth of what had occurred. The perpetrators were ‘separatists’, according to the Christian Science Monitor — what, you mean like my fellow Quebeckers?

New Hampshire Everyone wants to know what the key demographic will be in this election. In 1996, it was ‘soccer moms’; in 1994, ‘angry white men’. For Campaign ’04, the columnist Michelle Malkin has been touting the concept of ‘security moms’ — gun-owning women whom 9/11 shook out of their Gen-X stupor. I’d say ‘security moms’ — or ‘bellicose women’, as Prof Glenn Reynolds, America’s Instapundit, dubbed them — were certainly a factor and maybe a decisive one in Republican gains in the 2002 elections. But I wonder if there are quite so many of them two years on. And, in the absence of any alternative suggestions, it seems to me the key group in this election may be ‘girlie men’.

Mark Steyn says the so-called realists are wrong about the war on terror, and suggests that ‘creative disruption’ is the best way to deal with Saudi Arabia New Hampshire Here’s a headline from Tuesday’s Glasgow Herald: ‘Saudi Security Forces “Allowed the Killers to Escape”’. Hold that thought for a moment. For two-and-three-quarter years now, there’s been a continuing debate between, loosely, the ‘neoconservatives’ and the ‘realists’. The old realpolitik crowd dispute that the war on terror is a war at all, except in the debased sense of the ‘war on drugs’.

Mark Steyn says that the US President’s ‘transformational’ response to Muslim fundamentalism can save the Old World; European ‘managerialism’ can’t New Hampshire Last July, speaking to the United States Congress, the only assembly on the planet in which he’s still assured of a warm reception, Tony Blair remarked: ‘As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind?’ Excellent question.

New Hampshire A little over a month ago, in the Wall Street Journal, I wrote that Governor Howard Dean looked ‘like Bruce Banner just before he turns into the Incredible Hulk, as if his head’s about to explode out of his shirt collar’. On Monday night, Dean, a front-runner in the polls only a week ago, placed a very poor third in the Iowa caucuses — the first time, since he began his political career running for the state legislature in 1982, that the Vermonter has lost an election. He didn’t take it well. He came out on stage, took his jacket off and handed it to Tom Harkin, the wily Democratic senator who fancies himself as Iowa’s kingmaker and had made the mistake of jumping on the Dean bandwagon just as the wheels began to fall off.

New Hampshire Timing is everything. Leafing through our issue of two weeks ago, I feel it would be kindest to draw a veil over page 26 (‘Correlli Barnett says that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq serve as object lessons in how not to conduct an anti-terrorist campaign’) but that guy buried away on page 38 seems shrewder than ever: ‘It’s been a good year. Twelve months ago, Saddam Hussein was sitting on his solid gold toilet. He’s now on the run, moving every few hours and unlikely ever again to feel even a standard black plastic seat against his bottom.’ There didn’t seem to be many ‘facilities’, as the British landladies say, in Saddam’s hut, never mind down the spider hole.

New Hampshire In California, Muslim community leaders have applauded the decision of the Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano to change the name of its football team from the Crusaders to the less culturally insensitive Lions. Meanwhile, 20 miles up the road in Irvine, the Muslim Football League’s New Year tournament will bring together some of the most exciting Muslim football teams in Orange County: the Intifada, the Mujahideen, the Saracens and the Sword of Allah. That’s the spirit. I can’t wait for the California sporting calendar circa 2010: the San Diego Jihadi vs the Oakland Sensitives, the Malibu Hezbollah vs the Santa Monica Inoffensives, the Pasadena Sword of the Infidel Slayer vs the Bakersfield Self-Deprecators.

Mark Steyn says the CIA scandal is important not because it put an agent’s life at risk — it didn’t — but because it shows that US Intelligence is either obstructive or inept New Hampshire America now has its own version of l’affaire Gilligan. As in Britain, the story involves journalists, and sources, and the leaking of the name of a government employee, and an investigation into which high-up did the leaking, and how badly the country’s leaders will be damaged, etc. The details of the Kelly/Gilligan business never really held anybody’s attention over here: most people I’ve spoken to heard about the ‘sexed-up’ accusation and the suicide, decided it confirmed their low view of the BBC and then moved on to other things.

New Hampshire It's the poll that's got 'em all hot: Wesley K. Clark: 49 per cent; George W. Bush: 46 per cent. CNN and USA Today conducted it, and on air this week, listening to her 'senior political analyst' declare that 'President Bush is sinking', Judy Woodruff looked as if she wanted to do her Meg Ryan When Harry Met Sally impression: 'Yes, yes! Oh, God!! Yes!!! Aaaooooowwwwaaaooah!!!!' I'd say it's the poll that's faking it. It's comprised of 1,003 'national adults', of whom 877 are registered voters. Whether the others have ever voted at all is unknown. But, as a general rule, polls of registered voters are less accurate than polls of 'likely voters', and polls of just any old adults are less accurate than polls of registered voters.